Not wanting to be left out of the efforts to tackle the so-called housing crisis, Disy presented a range of proposals for affordable housing on Monday. Speaking at the presentation, Disy leader, Annita Demetriou, said that the scale of the housing crisis had been underestimated so far and her party with proposals and initiatives directed at the government was seeking to find solutions.
Demetriou said the problem was particularly acute for students, with their families being burdened with paying very high rents. One of the proposals was the speeding up of the construction of student housing by the University of Cyprus and Tepak. Pandering to the student population and the parents was a display of Demetriou’s populist instincts, because student accommodation should be the last concern of a country supposedly facing a housing crisis.
Surely, the priority should be to help low-income families that are having difficulty paying their rent or living in squalid accommodation because they cannot afford anything better. The state’s obligation is to cater for the housing needs of the poorest members, those most in need of support. Once this is achieved there could be state support schemes for the benefit of families with young children, single-parent families and so forth.
Students at public universities should be at the bottom of the list. The taxpayer is already covering the full cost of their studies and has no obligation to offer them subsidised accommodation as well. Why should the taxpayer provide the University of Cyprus with another 70 or 80 million euros for additional student housing, when it already has purpose-built student accommodation. Does every student at UCy have to be offered subsidised accommodation by the university?
Certainly not. No city-based university offers housing to all its students. In most European cities university students stay in cheap housing in the relatively poorer areas and in the suburbs, share accommodation with others or rent a room in a house. Why can’t Cyprus’ students do the same? And if they cannot afford cheap housing either they could stay at home and get a bus to the university, in the unlikely event they do not have a car. Even if a student lives in Limassol or Larnaca, they can get on the bus to Nicosia.
Cypriot students do not have a right to affordable luxury housing. If they do not want to study at university, free of charge, because there is no satisfactory affordable housing then too bad. We already have too many university graduates, without offering youths added incentives such as affordable accommodation for them to get a degree. On a different level, the state should not be cultivating the sense of entitlement of youth by trying to make university life as easy as possible for them. It is good for the young to encounter a little difficulty during student life – it is character-building and gives them a much-needed sense of perspective.
There is no acute housing problem for students as the House president dramatically stated. There is a problem if every student expects to find a one-bedroom flat, in a new apartment block, five minutes’ walk away from their university, and for a low rent. And if students do not want to burden their families with high rent, they can stay at home while at university, rather than expecting the taxpayer to provide them with subsidised student housing.
